A little over a week ago I grab my laptop an boot up. An error message comes up saying something about a hardware error and it seems to be frozen. So I reboot an nothing happens. No bios logging, no hdd light, nothing. Thinking the hdd died, I swap in a drive from an identical laptop, but it still will not boot up. Swapped memory, optical drive, wireless card with known working laptop (all without opening the case) and still nothing.
I come to the conclusion the motherboard died, so I order a new one. It came and when installing the new MB, I discover one of the support posts for the MB is broken off inside the case. This post is about 1/2" high and broken off the bottom of the laptop case. I inspect the case closely but can not find any impact marks, scuffs, etc. After questioning the kids, one admitted he may have stepped on it with his bare feet when it was upside down on the floor.
Even though I inspected the MB with a magnifying glass, I can't find any sign of stress cracks in the board. Guess it may have cracked or shorted out inside its layers, as all the surface components seem to be untouched.
Anyone ever have a MB die from stress/blunt trauma impact but show no signs? Or am I the lucky guy :-D
BTW, anyone want to buy some kids?